Commentary on the Apocalypse and commentary on the Book of Daniel
Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) in 1910
Sarcophagi of the Three Hebrews under arches within city of Babylon; four serpents, two framing portal, two framing the city; inscription, beginning at top of miniature and completed at bottom, BABILONE A NEBROT GIGANTE FUNDATA EST CIRCUS LATIDUDO MURORUM CUBITA QUINQUAGINTA ALTITUDO .CC. TRADITUS CIRCUITUM EIUS CCCCLXXX STADIIS CONCUDITUS. ID EST MILIA LXVIII STADIIS QUATTOR REGINE CONDITA UERO SUNT CORPORA SANCTORUM ANANIE AZARIE ET MISAHELI. ET UAS DOMINI A NABUCODONOSOR REGE DE IHERUSALEM ABLATA SUNT IN AMBITU UERO EIUS PRELIA FURORIS DOMINI HABITANS IBI DRACHONES ET STRIACTIONIS ET PHILOSOFI ABREANS.
This miniature of Babylon functioned as a frontispiece to the Book of Daniel. It was from Babylon that Nebuchadnezzar came and besieged Jerusalem. The entire city of Babylon is surrounded by two enormous serpents whose heads and tails fall on the central axis. Two more serpents flank the large doorway at bottom. Above the door an arcade houses the silver coffins of the three Jews who were saved from the burning furnace; they are identified by the inscription at top as Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (and were worshiped as saints in Spain). The inscription below relates how Nebuchadnezzar took vessels from the temple of Jerusalem and how the wrath of God inflicted dragons, ostriches, and seductively singing owls and sirens on the city. Such accounts may have been inspired by the protective reliefs of dragons on Babylon's famous Ishtar Gate.
BOOK OF DANIEL
Although it was once thought that the author was Daniel, a Jewish exile in Babylon in the sixth century B.C., most scholars agree the book was written between 168 and 165 B.C. in support of Jews persecuted by the Seleucid emperor, Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The book was used as a pattern for later Jewish and Christian apocalypses, including the present Apocalypse of John, which also told of the fall of Babylon and the coming of Christ and his church. The Daniel cycle was added to Beatus manuscripts about 945, the same time that Maius introduced the prefatory cycle. The artist responsible for the eleven miniatures of the Las Huelgas Daniel cycle is called the Master of Toledo, after the city where he painted both manuscripts and frescoes. He participated in a copy of St. Ildefonsus's Treatise on the Virginity of Mary, now in Madrid (cod. 10087), and in wall paintings at the Basilica of Santa Cruz in Toledo. The Daniel cycle, however, was not invented for this manuscript but derives from earlier illustrated Bibles.